The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-06-25
A LITERARY AMUSEMENT.
Boston ta0ner.

Boston Co0f1er.
 Every man who is called upon to look over the manuscripts which are sent to the office of & magazine or sub mitted for the examination of any publishing house of reputation, finds it exceedingly difficult to repreSs the feeling that half the energy of edu- cated people is wasted in futile at tempts at authorship. Seeing the small pile of available matter win nowed from the vast heap of material presented, it is hard to keep in mind the fact, for the most part lost sight of by the producers themselves, that in the majority of cases non-profes- sional writing is merely an amuse- ment indulged in for its own sake, the completed work having no real rela- tion to the matter at all.
 In all the arts there Is this same plethora of amateur work. Especially in painting and in literature is there an enormous mass of unsatisfactory ! work produced, simply as a pleasant means of occupying hours otherwise thrilled. In painting, the difficulty of getting wares before the public has an enormously restraining effect upon efforts to get work before the public, although every art dealer could tell of plentiful supplies of amateur and un- satisfactory work which he Is urged to buy or sell. In literature, the case of sending things to publishers and editors brings the producer into a closer relation to the public, but in both cases the rules governing pro- duction are the same. Constantly paragraphs in the new wspapers call at tention to the fact of the small chances of success, of the enormous supply oi work available, and the hopelessness of putting forward manuscripts which fail of being good enough, no matter what their excellence short of this. Nobody is by this deterred from writ ing, or from sending his manuscripts ofl when they are completed. People i find an increased zest in the pleasure of composition when they add the dream of publishing, and SO editors their winnowing hampercd by the many bushels of chaff to every measure of good grain.
 The true and sensible way for any writer, not making literature pro- tession, to regard his efforts is un- doubtedly to look upon composition as an amusement just as he holds lawn tennis or horseback riding to be al amusement. It is something he does for the pleasure of doing it; not Il labor by which he hopes 10 achiev, golden results. The delight of writ ing poor novel is very likely as grea, as that of producing masterpiece ex cept in those rare instances in which an author is gifted with the faculty oi properly estimating his own work The philosophical attitude, then, i' for the writer to say to himself or her. self: "The pleasure got out of thi, book in writing it is as great a. Thackeray could obtain from his best work. 1 should be very fool ish to expose myself to the chance oi spelling this happiness by giving the callous and indifferent public oppor- tunity to cavil and jeer at my novel will keep 1t to myself and preserve my joy unbroken. If the book Is bad of course should suppress it. If it is good nobody will ever appreciate it. and equally, of course, It should bc saved from the fate that always over takes good work" Thus the tempta- ton to print will be avoided, and the danger of publication is really the only vicious thing about amateur authorship. Writing novels would be quiet, pleasant, and even an edu- ! eating pastime, were it not for the { notion that they should afterward bt published.